Debussy: La Damoiselle Elue

La Damoiselle Elue is a ravishing piece which is often overlooked in Debussy's output. He wrote it when he was 'doing time' at the Villa Medici in Rome, as winner of the Prix de Rome, in 1887-88. It's a short cantata (19', but it sounds longer) for orchestra, choir, soprano and alto set to Dante Gabriel Rossetti's famous poem The Blessed Damozel.

I know the work well as I used to listen to it quite often in a CBS recording featuring Frederica von Stade and the Boston SO led by Ozawa. However, I have no idea where that LP or CD is now. It's not in my collection anymore. My father doesn't have it either. Maybe it was one of the few LPs I sold in the early 1980s when I switched to the CD format. Pity as it now has disappeared from the catalogue. The recent Sony boxed collection of Debussy works sadly features the version with Salonen. Meanwhile I ordered a cheap second hand copy of the LP online.

Anyway, with the Orfeo recording I'm quite sure to have a very good version on hand. It's a 1981 recording with the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart led by Gary Bertini. Ileana Cotrubas' fragile and silvery soprano is well cast as the Damozel. The little known Glenda Maurice takes a rather grand view of the reciter's role (there is a very nice testimonial by Maurice about the 'forced detours' in her life here). The recording offers all one could wish for in this piece: restrained and stylish but lively orchestral playing, a great key soloist, a good choir and a more than decent sound.

The same can't be said of the Salonen version, which I find dull and laboured. Tempos are misjudged as too slow. Salonen spotlights the many felicities in this score as a pedantic schoolmaster. Paula Rasmussen as reciter is a small disaster because she seems unsteady and shrill. Dawn Upshaw is not able to save the house. She goes along in Salonen's didactic approach, robbing the piece of its peculiar, antiquish freshness. The choir sounds stodgy and uninvolved. The recording, finally, is texturally boring, colourless and constricted in dynamics. All in all a CD that I wouldn't recommend as neither the Nocturnes nor the symphonic fragments from the Martyre are able to tilt the balance.

The DGG Debussy Edition also includes a version of La Damoiselle Elue. Interestingly, it's a version for piano and voices, recorded in 1994, that DGG licensed from Ades. Philippe Cassard is at the piano, Véronique Dietschy sings the Damozel and Doris Lamprecht is the reciter. I didn't expect too much of this recording as it seemed irresponsible to rob this piece from its superb orchestral garb. But it turns out remarkably well. The start is not very auspicious as Cassard plays the long instrumental introduction at a tempo that seems as ponderous as Salonen's. But the liveliness of the small, very present choir and the stylish, serious voice of Dietschy provide sufficient counterweight for the measured tempo. Lamprecht's contribution is, unfortunately, not very memorable. I have not been able to find a lot of info on Veronique Dietschy but she seemed to have been a striking artist (she pops up in cameo roles for a number of 1980s movies as well). I look forward to listening to the CD with Debussy's songs (Mélodies), also included in the DGG box. Altogether this is a very interesting recording of this Poéme lyrique to which I will gladly return.